Joan of Arc, loved by extreme rightists & feminists

The 100 Years' War (1337-1453) was horrendous. Endless battles contin­ued between English Plantagenets and French Valois, for control of Fren­ch soil. Late in the 100 Years War, English forces occupied much of northern France, including Normandy’s capital Rouen.

Joan of Arc was a proficient horse rider

and leader of the French soldiers

Meridian Hill Park, Wash DC

At first, teenage Joan of Arc (c1412–1431) was guided by the voice of teenage St Cath­erine of Alexandria (c287-305), herself martyred. Joan said Catherine led her to her sword, behind the altar of the church bearing the saint’s name.

Joan inspired surprising succes­ses against the English army south along the Loire. But in May 1430,  Joan was captured at Compiègne by the Burgundian allies of England and was moved to the main English headquarters in France, Rouen.

Joan was tried by the pro-English Bishop of Beauvais. Clearly they pl­anned to execute her, but they first needed to prove it was Sat­an who dict­at­ed her act­ions, and showed that King Charles VII had been ruled by diabolical forces. The Bishop started an In­quis­ition Tribunal where a clear Pol­itical Issue transform­ed into an Issue of Faith. Joan was burned at the stake in May 1431, in public.

Even when burned at the stake by the English, 

Joan of Arc remained a symbol of purity, Catholicism and French nationalism.

history.com

She was exonerated after a 2nd trial in Rouen in 1456. Too late to save Joan of course, but at least French citizens now saw her as a national heroine and religious saint.

Over the centuries, Joan became a symbol of reactionary national­ism, ven­erated by the Far Right long before she was canonised. In May 1920 the Roman Catholic church ironically canonised the young peasant girl it had burned back in 1431. This heretic had been the armour-plated, sword-waving, horse-riding, French leader and heroine of the 100 Years War.

 Joan of Arc dressed like a man

Etsy

To understand Rouen’s role in Joan’s his­tory, modern tourists visit the Joan of Arc Tower in Rouen Castle where she was imp­ris­oned await­ing ex­ecut­ion. This imposing tower is all that remains of the medieval castle that King Philippe Aug­uste built against the English in the C13th. No problem. The English military was back in control of Nor­m­andy during Joan’s part­icipation in the 100 Years War.

The city’s C15th archbishop's palace, alongside the Cath­ed­ral, was re­n­ovated from 2013. This palace complex was perfectly locat­ed; Joan was sentenced to death there! And in 2015 the Joan of Arc His­tory Museum opened. Rouen is full of import­ant religious and secular buil­dings eg Saint-Ouen and Saint-Maclou, and the Gothic Law Courts. The mod­ern Joan of Arc Church was built in 1979.

Joan had become one of the modern patron saints within France. Her brief life started the end of a medieval world of feudal warlords and powerful regional nobles, a task that ended 350 years later in the French Revolution.

So how did the medieval heretic turn into two very different modern sym­bols? Firstly consider how extreme rightest elements tried to under­mine the dem­ocratic government and promote a True France, one without Jews, im­mig­rants or academics. Historian Martha Hanna looked at why the extreme-right group Action française venerated St Joan. Action française wanted to smash the secular govern­ment of the 3rd Republic from 1870 and bring back the French monarchy. They urged St Joan’s Feast Day as a right-wing alternative to Bast­ille Day and rewarded brutes who bashed secular academics.

A well orchestrated campaign was conducted by French Catholics in the late 19th-early C20th. If Joan was finally reclaimed as a Cath­olic saint and martyr, it was primarily because she was represented as the very epitome of religion and nationalism that were power­ful forces in the Belle Ep­oque and WW1. Joan of Arc’s patriotic pop­ul­ar­ity inside France took off. By the time she was canon­ised in 1920, Action française and oth­er extreme rightist groups repeat­edly used Joan as a symbol of purity, Catholicism and Frenchness.

On the other hand during WW1, there was a strong appet­ite in France and among its Allies for a figure symb­olising an improbable comm­ander of an ordinary army; that Joan was a woman who showed that strength didn’t belong only to men.

And not just on the right; republ­ic­ans once suspicious of her cult embraced her too. Joan excited secular figures out­side France as a symbol of boundary-violating female power eg in Amer­ican war post­ers. But Joan’s image as an am­biguously gendered war­rior particularly solid­ified in The Arts. Note:

1] Cecil B DeMille’s 1916 silent film, Joan the Woman; 

2] George Bernard Shaw’s 1926 femin­ist play, Saint Joan &

3] Berthold Brecht’s 1929 drama with the blue-collar name Saint Joan of the Stockyards.

Joan of Arc Tower in Rouen Castle

French Monuments

When she was canonised, suffrage activists mounted el­ab­orate parad­es starring costumed equestrian Joans. Lit­erary scholar Karyn Sproles focused on the secular, feminist Joan of Arc: a 1936 biography by Bloomsbury aut­hor, cross-dresser and Virginia Woolf lover, Vita Sackville-West. Sproles noted that Sackville­-West was a careful researcher of Joan’s life but inter­preted the saint in terms relevant to herself: She saw Joan “not as a saint or a vision­ary, but as an active woman who led the life of a man without becoming male.” Sackville-West loved the way Joan wore masculine armour, noting that Vita herself would often don men’s clothing and call her­self by a man’s name to seduce other women. 

Joan predicted the modern, indep­endent woman by six centuries! She had became a heroine of feminism and androgyny, especially in Britain and the US. By the time Catholics marked the centennial of Joan’s canonisation in 2020, there were some Joan of Arcs who do not belong exclusively to the church.